


Voltafaccia

by emissaryarchitect, Insert_Generic_Username, Valentined



Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: (just trust me here), Additional Tags to Be Added, Alternate Title: Everyone's Redemption Arc, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Non-Incest Acheroncest, Pseudoscience, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-06-28 04:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15700137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emissaryarchitect/pseuds/emissaryarchitect, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insert_Generic_Username/pseuds/Insert_Generic_Username, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valentined/pseuds/Valentined
Summary: From the little bit his older time twin had told him, Samos knew that Jak owed much of his courage in the face of even the most horrible experiences to the fact that he’d had a Sage to lead and guide him through the better part of his childhood. The only problem was that the other Samos never told him which sage.Who better to train up a future dark warrior than the first sage specializing in the most dangerous form of energy in the world?





	1. Prologue

When Samos accepted the fact that he would have to leave his entire world behind to travel back Precursors only knew how long, he had done so with the understanding that he _wasn’t_ completing a circle. The other Samos, the old man who called himself a sage, spoke in hushed tones to his younger time twin while Jak spoke to his own—this, Samos knew, was a secret that he didn’t want their young mutual acquaintance to know.

“It’s not a circle,” he explained quickly, obviously trying to impart as much meaning as he could in as few words as possible. “It’s doubling back on itself over and over, but it’s never the same twice. It wasn’t like this for me, it won’t be for you.”

“I’m guessing that means you can’t tell me what to do,” the younger of the two replied.

The sage shook his head in response. “It’s not going to be the same. This is…I think it’s the closest we’ve come to things going right. It’s close. He’s not—I don’t think he’s supposed to be like this.” He slanted his eyes on Jak as he lifted the little boy up into the rift rider. “But it’s close. I can feel it in the earth, the trees—it’s close. _He’s_ close.”

Samos resisted the urge to grind his teeth and demand a clearer explanation. It was heartening to know, at least, that he wasn’t doomed to becoming the same cranky, ungrateful, arrogant stick in the mud that this old man was. And he was old, so much older than the ten years’ difference should have left him. What had his timeline been like? Assuming that they’d been the same at the beginning, more or less, what was it that the old man had seen that turned him into…this?

“What was the difference this time?”

The sage closed his eyes, shaking his head in clear frustration. “If I could tell you, I would. I have no way to be sure, but I think—at least, I’d like to think—that it’s because he had a sage watching over him. Someone to teach him what he would need to know to survive what they did to him.”

It seemed plausible enough, although Samos had no idea how he was supposed to impart knowledge that he absolutely didn’t have onto a little boy yet too young to understand much of anything. He had no way to grasp the concept that he was the last of his line, the best chance for the only safe haven left in the world to survive the terrors Praxis hammered into its walls of metal and stone and energy.

As he climbed into the rift rider and hollered something he hoped was optimistic enough to keep them from feeling the guilt already curling deep in the green muscle of his chest, Samos wondered if the old man even realized what he was demanding. Whatever happened in his timeline was different, obviously; he hadn’t raised up a little boy knowing that he was eventually going to send him off into years of torture.

How could he possibly take care of this boy with a clear conscience, knowing what he was likely to become? It was entirely possible that this was the perfected timeline, that this was how the Precursors and Mar and all the powers out there in the universe wanted it. Samos could be doomed to repeat the process over and over throughout time and history, to just stand back and let it happen. It would have been easy to think of it as a noble sacrifice on both their parts, that Samos had to become an accomplice in Praxis’ plot to create the perfect weapon, that Jak had to suffer in order to gain the powers he needed to end the metalhead threat once and for all, but how could that possibly be the old man’s choice to make?

The light swallowed them both up, and Samos tore himself away from thought to hold the boy—Jak, he supposed—close as they careened back through the ages. Jak clung to his tunic, eyes buried in his chest, body shaking. Samos held him tight with both oversized hands.

“How am I supposed to protect you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doodles and other nonsense related to this fic can be found on [my tumblr](http://kingofbeartraps.tumblr.com/tagged/voltafaccia-au/).


	2. Looping Back

The island was only a couple miles across from what Samos could see from his perch high atop a rough-hewn cliff. There were no trees, or at least none healthy enough to communicate, but the stone thrummed up through his sandals in an ultraviolet song that left an acrid taste in the back of his throat. It was so much noise, deciphering exactly what the world around him was trying to say, the distinct message of the life flowing through the earth, was difficult to say the least. Samos had only been at this for a couple months, after all, and while he’d had his older time twin to walk him through the rougher patches—the “sage mania,” he called it—that didn’t mean he was any sort of expert just yet.

Regardless, the one thing that was clear from signal running through those still unfamiliar senses was that this place felt eerily like Dead Town. There was no indication that it was currently inhabited, but the massive skeletal shapes in the distance, buried in the blackened earth, gave him little reason to question why.

Where in the world were they?

He slid back down the stone to meet the young boy waiting below, the trail of gravel and scrape of high wooden shoes interrupting the stillness and the low rhythm of the waves. The young, mute boy that would one day be Jak turned to watch, but otherwise stayed sitting with his legs splayed out in front of him, waiting where Samos had told him. At least he was obedient, if only for now.

“It looks like we’ll want to head that way,” he gestured with a nod of his head. “There’s an old Precursor structure that way, at least we can try to get you out of the sun.”

The child rolled his eyes slightly and made a short, metered gesture with one hand. Samos had seen him make similar movements before, always wondering if it was some form of signspeak, but Kor had insisted that they were just the self-defined gestures of a voiceless child. There was no way to be sure now. Still, the boy got to his feet without complaint and waited for Samos to take his hand before he started off away from the rift rider.

The gleaming copper structure came into view as they rounded the corner of a cliff, working their way down sharp inclines and a pit of mud before they reached the large flat steps and even larger half-open aperture of an entrance. The symbol emblazoned above the gap in the wall indicated that it could be opened with blue eco, but apparently it had been a while since it was operational. Someone or something had probably pried it open by force, at least partially, although there were no visible tool marks along the edges of the door itself.

Samos stepped through first, all but hauling the boy in behind him, and then immediately stopped.

The first thing he noticed was that the constant sound of life in the back of his head, ranging from a low hum to a sharp howl, cut off entirely when both feet came down on the metal surface of the structure’s interior floor. The silence was stunning, even disturbing, and left something in Samos aching at the loss. Before the assault on the holy district stripped him of his home and position, he had devoted the better part of his life to studying the Precursors and what they left behind. He hadn’t had the opportunity to revisit any of the ruins mentioned in his theses in years, much less in the short time since the other Samos arranged for him to “awaken” into the role of a proper sage. He had no idea they felt so horribly, utterly _dead_.

The interior of the structure was perfectly circular, with a round indentation in the center that was easily three times Samos’ diminutive height in width; judging by the interlocking plates that covered the seam in the middle of the indentation, meeting like crocadog’s teeth, it was probably some kind of massive container.

The pieces fell into place in a split second. The acrid eco song in the earth was familiar, like Dead Town—like dark eco, sickly sweet and heavy in the air. The surrounding area was still conscious, but relatively devoid of obvious flora and fauna.

Samos had only ever heard stories of the old dark eco silos, torn open one by one by metalheads after their arrival on this small incomplete planet, but he knew beyond any doubt that he and the kid stood on one at that very moment. Fully intact, fully contained.

They really had traveled back into ancient history, hadn’t they?

The kid gave Samos’ hand a sharp tug and pointed one chubby hand toward the upper level of the structure; series of oversized platforms led up to it, levitating perfectly still through some technology lost with its creators, and a number of wooden slats had been strung together to form a roof.

There was a man on the upper level, standing with his back to Samos and the kid, coiling up a length of heavy rope as he milled about, using one foot to slide a crate slowly across the floor.

“…Hello?” Samos said, trying not to startle the stranger too much.

The man whipped around, rope still in hand, and went completely still—impossibly still, the same way Samos had seen Jak freeze up when he was surprised. Like a wild animal caught in the hunt. It gave Samos a chance to take him in, from the long golden braid over his shoulder to his carefully groomed goatee, the gleaming coppery gauntlet covering his right forearm and the high glove on his left hand, stained a deep red-purple. His skin was undeniably tanned, but there was a sort of cool pallor to it, an almost ashen overlay that made him look just a little bit sick.

“Hello,” Samos repeated with noticeably more trepidation.

“You—how—” His skin paled further when his deep red eyes lit on the kid. “Sweet Precursors, is that a _child_?” The man’s accent was sharp but not entirely foreign, just slightly off from the one Samos heard in most of the nobility living in the holy district before the attack. More like the monk families, maybe? Either way, there was disbelief in his voice, but even more than that was a heavy, protective tone of disapproval.

Samos looked down at the kid—Jak, he reminded himself, this was Jak—then back up to the man on the upper level. “Well, yes.”

“Oh for the love of—bring him up here!” He held out both arms, as though intending to lift the boy up himself even from that distance. Samos could see then that the trigger finger on his gauntlet was different, the same tone as his skin, and lacked the metallic segmenting visible on the other digits. As he approached, motivated far more by the man’s tone than his appearance, he realized that it wasn’t a gauntlet at all. Instead, the man sported what appeared to be a primitive prosthetic, the first finger still flesh and bone while the rest had been replaced or encased in what was clearly Precursor metal.

Samos helped young Jak up the large steps to the platform where the man was waiting, hesitating on the last one when the large, roiling pool of gleaming electric violet and black came into view, the scent of dark eco further assaulting his senses. Jak had no such qualms with the stuff, making a small jump from the final step to the upper level, where the man was waiting.

He had knelt down beside the very box he’d been sliding over when Samos approached, stowing the rope while he fished about. By the time young Jak reached his side, the stranger had produced a rudimentary respirator from the box, similar to the one Torn had used since the attack on Dead Town scarred his esophagus.

“Here we go,” he said, voice much gentler as he held the mask to the boy’s face in spite of the fact that it was clearly too big. Little Jak reached up and held it on, blue eyes bright with a hidden smile. The stranger smiled back, reaching up to put his gloved good hand on the boy’s head. “Just breathe with that for a while, all right? You’ll be fine.”

When little Jak nodded and moved to sit on another crate, the man turned on Samos. Not _to_ Samos, _on_ Samos. There was anger in his expression, eyebrows cutting a line almost as sharp as his rather pronounced canines, as distinct as the angled slant of a healed break at the bridge of his long nose. “What were you thinking, bringing a child here?” His voice was a low hiss, hidden from the boy mere yards away. “Do you have any idea what kind of effect even moderate exposure to the air here could do to his skeletal development? And that’s not even discussing the risk of mental instability—if he has a history of channeling in his family it could stay dormant for years, cycling and concentrating and caving in on itself over and over until he hits outright _saturate mania_ —”

Samos would have liked to defend himself, especially considering he had no clue where he was in the first place, but before he could even try to break down the man’s almost disarmingly educated tirade another voice broke echoed across the expanse of metal and sickly-sweet air.

This one was higher and noticeably more feminine, albeit still fairly deep, particularly for the petite frame of the woman now standing on the other end of the structure.

“Are you done packing up yet?”

“Maia!” the man all but barked, whipping around and gesturing sharply at Samos. “I’m afraid we have company, dearest, and he was so kind as to bring _a small child_ with him!”

The woman, Maia, looked up and blinked, dark eyes flitting from Samos to the other man and back again. The strained flush in her tanned cheeks rose slightly. “He…what?” She arched an eyebrow, approaching in bewilderment. “What’s going on? Who are you?”

“My name is Samos,” he said at last. “This is Jak.”

“Oh, his name is Jak, that’s excellent, I’ll be sure to mention that in my next book when I talk about the physiological trauma he’s sure to suffer—”

“Gol,” Maia interjected, stern.

He cut off with a frustrated noise and turned away from Samos entirely, striding back over to Jak and kneeling beside him, asking after him in hushed tones even as Maia made her way up the steps and looked down at Samos. She was taller than her companion, Gol, and more heavily built as well. If Samos had to guess, he would say that this woman was definitely the more physically dangerous of the two.

“You’ll have to forgive Gol,” she said, although her tone didn’t make it sound like an apology. “All dramatics aside, what possessed you to bring a little boy out here with you? It’s not exactly an ideal family picnic location.”

Here, Samos realized, was where the real trouble began. This place was obviously known to be extremely dangerous, likely thanks to the massive amount of dark eco present, but Samos honestly had no clue where he was. He also had no way to explain how they had come to be here beyond the presence of the rift rider, which had stubbornly refused to do any more flying since they were summarily ejected from the concentrated flow of time into this unknown, nameless place and time.

He heaved a sigh, dark eyes drifting to little Jak. This was how it started, then? Was this his first exposure, was it being here that tainted him enough to survive what Praxis would and had done to him?

“Honestly, I don’t know where we are,” he explained. Simplicity was key. No details meant no need to lie—he was sure there would be quite enough of that in coming years as Jak eventually found his voice and started asking where he came from, what happened to his parents and how he’d come to be here.

Gol looked back over his shoulder, eyebrows raised and heavy-lidded eyes every bit as incredulous as his accented voice. “You don’t know where you are? You can’t possibly be serious.” He stood again, coming to stand alongside Maia and look down at Samos, somehow intimidating in spite of his relatively diminutive frame. He searched Samos’ face for a long moment, eyes narrowing even as the rest of his body fell back to that absolute utter stillness, the dead metal around them seeming more likely to move.

His voice dropped to a murmur. “You’re telling the truth. How?”

“We…it wasn’t safe where we were, not for him.”

“And it’s safer _here_?” This time it was Maia’s turn to sound incredulous.

Samos’ own voice was low, but confidence welled in his chest as he spoke. “Trust me, this is so much safer for him that you wouldn’t even know where to start.”

The two exchanged a look then, but before either could do or say anything to challenge what was obviously a very difficult claim to believe, a gust of wind tore across the platform. The acrid scent of dark eco ebbed for a moment, the spray from the pool below carried downwind; more importantly, the gust twisted and curled about just so, catching the young Jak’s leather cap and flinging it straight into the well of dark liquid.

The immediate distress on the child’s face was clear as he leapt down from the crate where he had been seated, shock of green-to-blond hair exposed fully to the sunlight. Really, it was a wonder that no one had ever even contemplated the possibility of a relation between him and Jak—the other Jak, the heroic dark warrior who had saved the world just the night before and yet somehow centuries in the future. The resemblance was uncanny, but somehow went unnoticed even to the Underground’s most observant agents.

Little Jak toddled to the edge of the pool with no clear intent of slowing down, stopped short only by the metallic right hand of the overprotective and stranger, Gol. He caught the boy easily by the back of his overalls, pulling him back in a movement that was far too quick. It was possible that his reflexes were enhanced somehow, but the motion seemed almost practiced, leading Samos to deduce that he had almost certainly dealt with small children before.

“Easy there,” he warned, moving to step between the child and the edge of the pool. “None of us wants you falling in, now.”

Jak’s blue eyes gleamed with unshed tears, his lower lip trembling slightly as he gestured feebly town into the eco, where his cap was just starting to sink into the thick, shimmery liquid.

“There’s nothing for it now,” Samos said with a sigh, at last stepping closer. “We’ll get you a new one once we’re settled, all right?” The sage’s words clearly didn’t reassure the boy in the slightest. Instead, Jak’s breaths started coming in short, sharp gasps, his mouth falling open as his little face flushed red with panic.

Although his grin showed canines that were much too sharp, Gol’s smile was nonetheless genuine and, somehow, more soothing to the boy than Samos’ attempt at placation. He dropped to one knee, placing his mismatched hands on Jak’s shoulders. “It’s all right,” he assured. “We’ll get it back for you, how’s that?” Somehow it didn’t sound like a platitude, but rather a promise.

Little Jak blinked his big blue eyes, comprehending the man’s words but clearly not understanding the gravity of his promise. While Samos understood immediately, he was just as confused about how the man intended to put his credits where his mouth was.

“Maia, the rope.”

She sighed. “We just packed the rope…” Nevertheless, the young woman turned and drew the heavy length of cord from the open crate while Gol coaxed Jak back to his perch on the other box, returning the oversized respirator to his flushed, chubby face.

While Maia fiddled with the rope, Gol pulled the glove on his left arm up clear to his bicep and tugged another—larger and fashioned with a number of drawstrings at multiple points—over his coppery prosthesis. Once that was done, strings drawn tight around the clunky wrist joint and the point just south of his elbow, where metal met flesh, he and Maia took a short moment to tie the rope off between them.

In the end, they expertly constructed a sort of makeshift harness over Gol’s torso while Maia looped it several times around her waist, holding the slack end tight in one hand. The end connecting her to Gol hung at her back, allowing her to plant her feet and tilt forward slightly as he took several steps forward and then, against all sense, tilted down to stand suspended inside the well, booted feet planted firmly on metal and body held parallel to the eco.

It was one of the most foolhardy, fascinating things Samos had ever seen.

“A little further, dearest,” Gol called, voice echoing up from the pool in a garbled, layered mess unique to the strange acoustic properties of Precursor metal. In response Maia took a careful half-step backward, leaning forward with all her weight to keep the rope taut and counterbalance her companion’s weight in the well. Gol took a slow step down the side in perfect time.

Samos almost cried out when, contrary to any concept of safety or self-preservation, Gol reached down into the dark eco itself. The green sage realized quickly enough that this was the reason for the gloves; the fumes alone could be mildly toxic, but chances were the man had at least some measure of tolerance to the stuff. Most people in Samos’ own time period had, after all, and they were exposed to far less and in a far less concentrated form.

“Just a bit— _oop_.” Gol slipped as Maia shifted back ever so slightly, dropping him closer to the surface of the well. The end of his braid slipped over his shoulder and splashed into the fluid, and the way his shoulders tensed made it clear even from above that he’d winced at the movement. “There!” He called out, triumphant. “I’ve got it, pull me up.”

With obvious relief, the woman took a long, firm stride forward, Gol stepping backward in tandem until he was once again safe on the platform. In his hand he held Jak’s cap, stained slightly violet by the short dip. In fact, the leather was almost the same deep maroon color as Gol’s arm-length gloves, making it suddenly distressingly clear that it wasn’t their original color.

Gol held the cap up for an undeniably delighted Jak to see. “Here we are. It will need to be rinsed and dried before you can wear it, just for safety’s sake—”

Jak nodded enthusiastically, apparently too thrilled to have it back out of the pool to care about the wait.

“—but we’d intended to stay in Sandover overnight anyway, so you can have it back before we head back up north tomorrow.”

Samos held a new appreciation for the strangers, but was taken off-guard at the name of the village. Sandover, like the old name for the holy district back in Haven. The first village taken by the metalheads and the first retaken by Mar in his fight to create a better world. Samos’ older time twin had lived there, said that Jak grew up there, safe and sound and separate from the danger of the future to which he was born. They really were exactly where—and _when_ —they needed to be.

Maia made a high noise somewhere between disappointment and distress as Gol peeled his gloves off, revealing a burst of icy violet dyed into the uppermost portion of his left arm in a distinct splash pattern.

“Oh, not again.”

Gol groaned in frustration, reaching up to rub at the discolored patch with his prosthesis. “Must have splashed up under the hem while I was fishing about,” he grumbled. “Ugh, now I’m going to be purple for a week.”

Maia sighed, holding out a bag for him to deposit the gloves and cap into. “To be fair, you’ll be completely purple eventually,” she said, a little sardonic.

“I know, I know.” He frowned, turning his head to survey the contaminated tissue once more. “It’s the patchiness that gets to me.”

“Are you all right?” Samos blurted, stepping closer. Two pairs of red eyes, slightly mismatched in hue and shade, turned on him, Gol’s narrowing slightly in apparent confusion even as one coppery eyebrow reached toward the sharp widow’s peak of his hairline. “Direct exposure to dark eco,” Samos continued. “It’s caustic at the best of times, but usually outright fatal. If you don’t get it treated—”

Gol started laughing. It was a rich, heady and entirely arrogant sound that set Samos completely on edge. He grinned as he trailed off, shaking his head slightly and perching his living hand on one hip. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

The way Samos blinked at him must have been answer enough.

“Gol Acheron,” he said, as though it was supposed to mean something. When Samos remained unmoved he scoffed. “Dear Precursors, where _are_ you from? I know my work is only just gaining real traction at the Brink, but even academics at the edge of the planet know me by name.” His brow creased, confused and a little offended. “Where did you come from, Samos, that you’ve never heard of the first Sage of Dark Eco?”

The green sage went rigid, eyes widening slightly. The first—no, that wasn’t possible. There were children’s stories about a dark sage that went mad and had to be put down by a channeler blessed by the Precursors themselves, but there was only one to actually make historical record. An unnamed genius from less than a century before Mar’s time, whose carefully notated research journals had been integral to the establishment and maintenance of Haven’s eco grid, who left tome after tome to be closely protected through the ages. First it had been the monks in the holy district, then a scattering of noble families, educational institutions and even Samos himself with the odd volume in their possession after the district fell.

It had also certainly been that research that led to the creation and eventual success of the Dark Warrior Program, although which notes led Praxis and his butchers to the conclusion that became Jak was a mystery. Samos may have written a doctoral thesis in eco studies, but dark had never been his field of expertise.

Regardless, Samos was shaken, staring up at this relatively young—if not youthful—man, with his platinum-blond-to-copper hair and his ever so slightly ashen skin. His accent, his bearing, his behavior…it all made sense.

Gol all but smirked, voice dropping to a deep murmur. “Oh,” he breathed, “I see you _have_ heard of me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally a 7000+ word chapter, but it worked better split into two parts.
> 
> Doodles and other nonsense related to this fic can be found on [my tumblr](http://kingofbeartraps.tumblr.com/tagged/voltafaccia-au/).


	3. Established Characters

Misty Island wasn’t very large, thankfully, and was much easier to navigate when one knew where they were going, which the Acherons absolutely did. Gol, ego thoroughly stroked by the stunned look on Samos’ face when recognition dawned at last, had become significantly more amenable to helping the strange old man and his ward after a bit more of the story had been disclosed.

Currently Gol was carrying the boy—who Samos called Jak, although he’d just shrugged when asked if that was his name—on his back, arms looped around his chubby little legs and keeping his bare feet off the contaminated earth of the island. The majority of the eco in the soil of Misty Island was inert, of course, but it wasn’t worth the risk. The last thing the poor boy needed was to end up as small in stature as Gol because someone let him run around barefoot in one of the most dangerous areas in the known world. The respirator, too bulky to carry around, had been replaced with a length of cloth that Maia had doused in a transparent liquid that glowed faintly, probably a low level of green eco suspended in water or a saline solution.

“The construction is…interesting,” Maia said, turning a slow circle around the strange machine Samos claimed had carried them across the sea. She poked and picked at various points on the machine, running her hand down the barely-glowing back end of the thing, tugging at spots where the metal plating seemed loose.

In this lighting, Gol found that the strange old man looked a little less green than he had before. It was difficult to tell if he was actually green or just eerily pale and the glint of the Precursor metal around the silo had given him an odd sort of pallor; now it was the glow of what was probably the engine of his strange transport lending to the odd coloration. Probably.

“Did you build this?” Maia asked at last, looking over her shoulder. When Samos shook his head, she sighed in obvious disappointment and went back to fiddling with the engine. “I suppose that would be too much to ask, if you’d built it you’d know what was wrong with it.” She frowned, reaching down to pull a tool off her belt and give the side of the craft a light tap, listening to the reverberation with obvious curiosity.

Samos watched her work with equal interest. “It was constructed by a…good friend,” he explained. “For the express purpose of carrying the boy to safety.” He frowned, adjusting his odd spectacles with downcast eyes. “I suppose it served well enough.”

Maia shrugged, using another, more delicate tool from one of her pockets to bend back a piece of metal from the front console. “It brought you here, at least.”

“To people who can help,” Samos added, voice low and almost uncertain. Like he was trying to convince himself as much as anything else. “Maybe the only ones on this side who can.”

Now it was Gol’s turn to frown, but he was once again interrupted before he was able to ask for elaboration, this time when the back portion of the craft flared brighter, flickering like firelight through seawater. Maia leapt from the device when it rattled slightly and lifted, just a bit, from the ground. Then, with what could only be described as a low sigh, the engine went out entirely.

“Oh for the love of—” Maia heaved her own sigh, significantly more frustrated, and gave the console a hard slap just to one side of the gleaming ruby set into the metal.

The engine, once again, flickered to life.

“Thank the Precursors,” she mumbled. “It won’t take you anywhere else—” She placed a hand against the front console and gave a hard push, to which the craft responded by shifting forward by inches. It was enough. “—but this should be enough to get it to the other side of the island.” The young woman looked back at Samos with a smile. “Honestly, I’m shocked it carried you clear across the sea. I didn’t know anyone had worked out the functionality of an existing a-grav unit enough to make it last that long.”

“It’s…complicated. But we weren’t in the air very long.”

Gol frowned, shifting little Jak on his shoulders. The boy was growing increasingly heavy, as though falling asleep on his back, but he didn’t really mind. He’d dealt with worse, after all, Dax’s weight seemed to double when he fell asleep. “I’ve done expeditions through the Far Sea,” he insisted. “I was out on the water for a month without seeing land. There’s nothing out there.”

Samos just shook his head. “I couldn’t explain it if I tried.”

Gol exchanged a charged look with Maia, and together they came to the same decision: Samos was absolutely lying about _something_. They just couldn’t tell what. He told the truth before, about the danger the boy had been in; he was telling the truth here, about the length of their trip. He was omitting key details, for some reason or another.

The thump of Jak’s cheek against Gol’s back when he finally fell asleep was enough to break the tension. If it really was for the safety of a child, were the details really that important? Whatever these two were running from, it was bad enough that they had crossed an impassable ocean to get away from it. The minutiae would come to light eventually.

Maia just shrugged slightly to dismiss the concern for the moment before bracing her feet on the ground and giving the craft a heave, pushing it forward a good foot or so. This would take a while.

The problem with a-grav engines, from what Gol understood of Maia’s explanations, was that they didn’t actually negate the weight of the device to which they were attached: even the best antigravity core still required one hell of a propulsion system to push it through the air once it was there. The term “a-grav” itself was a misnomer, in fact, as the few functional engines today—reverse-engineered from ancient Precursor tech, of course—simply suspended the craft on a bed of particles several inches to several feet off the ground. While the intangible surface created by the engine was unfortunately anything but frictionless, it _was_ perfectly level and quite smooth, which was what allowed Maia to push Samos’ craft by hand in spite of its weight.

Gol had once asked her if a-grav engines rode energy currents the same way a fully awakened sage could fly on the ambient particles of eco in the air, and Maia had responded that there was no way to tell until either of them learned how to fly. She had then kicked him out of the workshop because, according to her, he wasn’t going to figure out how to fly by standing around.

She was right, of course. Maia was usually right.

“Should we help?” Samos asked, moving forward slightly as Maia pushed the craft down the hill toward the silo.

Gol chuckled. “No, no, she takes these things very personally.”

“And I don’t trust him to touch anything, honestly,” she quipped, just on the cusp between exasperation and teasing. Gol frowned slightly; he wasn’t _that_ bad, especially since his nervous system finally synchronized with the prosthetic exoskeleton on his otherwise useless right arm. It had only been a couple years, however, and his track record up until that point was hardly encouraging.

He didn’t argue the point, allowing Samos to track along between himself and Maia, short quips of conversation passing between them as they worked his craft slowly across Misty Island. Overall the old man seemed…distracted was the best term for it, Gol supposed. His mind was clearly elsewhere, dark eyes occasionally flitting back not to Gol, but to the very much alive weight that was Jak held on his back.

It wasn’t until they made it through the other end of the old silo amphitheater that Samos really seemed to pull back out of his thoughts, when he stopped on the stairs and blinked at the fossil field spread out before them.

“Precursors,” he murmured, eyes wide. “There…I saw one of them from the hill, but there’s so many.”

Gol came even with him again, looking out and wondering what this must look like to new eyes. He’d been coming to Misty Island since he was six or seven, thanks to his parents, and couldn’t even remember the first time he’d lain eyes on the leviathan skeletons. What must it be like for Samos, looking out at these massive teeth and ribs and horns jutting up from the charred soil of the contaminated island?

Samos looked up at him—which was an odd experience, while the old man obviously suffered from some sort of fairly severe skeletal growth disorder Gol was still entirely unused to adults having to cast their eyes upward to meet his own. “What happened to them?”

He shrugged slightly in response, careful not to rouse Jak. “No one knows, really. There are the theories that the silo here has something to do with it, but I doubt it.” The facility was locked tight, after all, and only the Precursors knew how to part the gaping maw and expose the energy within. “It must have happened all at once for them to be strewn about like this, all at around the same level in the soil, the same state of fossilization…”

“Could it have something to do with what tore open the Brink?”

Maia stopped and whipped around, the surprise as obvious on her face as it was on Gol’s as they stared at the strange man standing on the steps. She straightened up, reaching up to tuck a lock of gold-to-red hair back under the green-lensed goggles set high on her forehead. “What happened on the…” She exchanged a look with Gol before turning her full attention to Samos. “What do you mean?”

Samos didn’t balk at the sudden attention. If anything, he stood a little taller, looking significantly more confident. “I know most theories insist that the Brink is the place the Precursors stopped building, but geological studies indicate that the stone around the subrail—” He stopped then, taking a deep breath and giving his head a slight shake, long ears swaying slightly in the movement. “The stone around the ruins out there shows signs of eruption, as if it was torn upward off the metal used to structure the planet in the first place.” He gestured slightly with his hands, back and forth. “There are also signs of great damage the further down into the ruins one descends, implying that whatever occurred did so deep in the planet. It’s entirely possible that the force of the cataclysm traveled through the tunnels and eco lines and pushed the fallout well beyond the Brink itself. It might explain a sudden extinction event like the skeletons here seem to indicate.”

To say this was a surprise would have been an understatement. Gol found himself speechless for a long moment after Samos’ short educational lecture, stunned. Had he been some sort of academic back home?

“You’re well educated,” Maia said at last. “Most people, even other academics, subscribe to the incomplete world theory. It’s…nice to hear someone else who doesn’t.”

Now Samos blinked for a moment, then smiled. “Oh. Well, I’ve done a lot of studying, considering—I suppose it’s my turn to introduce myself properly, then!” He puffed himself up slightly, adjusting his tunic. “I prefer people just call me Samos, but my _proper_ title is Samos Hagai, sage of green eco.” His smile broadened slightly. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Gol found himself reeling. There was so sage of green eco, as far as he knew there never had been. As with any eco, the side effects of early life overexposure could be devastating, leading to everything from growth disorders to cancer. And yet…the tint of his skin and hair, the almost eerie black hue of his eyes and the obviously faulty growth pattern in his bones and muscle structure could easily be indications of overexposure to green eco quite early in his life. Most sages had to be exposed to their patron energy at a very young age if they wanted to reach the level of understanding necessary to take the title before they were too old to utilize it, the practice usually arising in families with natural affinities but occasionally—as was the case with Gol himself—the result of irresponsible parents and terrible accidents. Which one applied here?

Aloud, all he could manage in response was to blurt out, “So that’s why you’re green.”

Maia held a hand to her face, but wasn’t entirely able to stifle the laugh that burst from her throat. Samos, to his benefit, just gave Gol a deadpan look and waited for him to redeem himself.

“…Precursors, that’s not—ugh.” He sighed and lowered his head, shifting the weight of Jak on his back.

“You’ll have to forgive Gol,” Maia said, yet again not seeming sorry at all. If anything, the twinkle in her eyes betrayed amusement at Gol’s faux pas rather than any sort of remorse. “He’s not used to being caught off-guard in his own field.” She smiled down at Samos. “But I will say that it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“We’ll introduce you to the others.” It wasn’t a suggestion, but Gol didn’t see why it should have been. There was suddenly even more here that they didn’t know, and the other sages would be the first step in putting the puzzle that was this small green man together. “They’ll want to know you’re around, regardless of the circumstance or where you plan to settle.”

* * *

Properly introduced at last, Samos couldn’t help his immediate response. “Sandover. I’ll be…I’ll settle in Sandover.” The other Samos had, after all, and whether this timeline was a tilted loop that would never quite match up with the world he remembered or a perfect circle setting little Jak on the path to his doom and salvation in a single stroke, it was best to follow the history he knew.

Gol frowned, setting his jaw slightly. His voice dipped closer to a murmur, some unknown experience darkening his tone. “I would…take some time to think about that. Sandover isn’t particularly fond of sages.”

In contrast, Maia’s voice was gentle. “No, dearest. They just don’t like us.”

“Me,” Gol corrected with a sigh, straightening slightly, hefting Jak a little higher on his shoulders. The boy yawned and turned his head the other direction, but didn’t wake. “Perhaps they’ll be more forgiving of your color palette than mine. I suppose we’ll have to see.” He turned and moved off down the stairs and across the field. “Maia, if you please.”

For a moment she just watched him go, allowing him to take the lead with regret clear on her face, then she let out a long breath and gave her head a shake. “Come along, Samos.” She returned to the rift rider and braced herself against the console once more, giving a heave.

It was clear that they had struck a chord in the young sage, and not a pleasant one. As with so many things—from the disappearance of the Precursors to the mystery of the giant fossils rearing up from the ground—Samos found himself with just one question: what happened? In his time, the very concept of a sage was revered, albeit against the wishes and ordinances of Praxis’ rule. The idea that a place like Sandover, the place that would become the heart of learning and spirituality in Haven, could look on any sage with distaste was beyond foreign, it was _bizarre_.

Samos supposed that, if nothing else, he had plenty of time to figure it out. It was one thing that his older self had been able to promise, the one thing that the girl who would one day be his daughter had given him. He had nothing, here, but time.

* * *

The beach smelled of the familiar eco-tinted salt spray of Samos’ younger days in the holy district. The energetic reek was much weaker here, the sand a lighter, warmer shade of grey; thin, barren trees and dry shoots of grass dotted the landscape, fighting their way toward the sunlight through the haze of lilac mist that parted over the water. The sights and smells were encouraging enough to take the edge off the concern that Gol had—intentionally or otherwise—seeded in the forefront of the green sage’s mind.

If the people of Sandover were truly as distrustful of sages as Gol’s statement implied, then Samos would just have to prove himself to be a sage worth keeping around. He’d done it for the entire underground movement, building support from a huge swath of Haven City through action and ideal more than any attempt at words; he could do the same here. Green eco was very different than even the other base variants, anyway, never mind dark eco—if the people of Sandover were distrustful of sages in general because of Gol, he could only assume it was the undeniable destructive power of his patron energy that fueled the flame. Green could be dangerous, of course, and highly destructive when used incorrectly, but unlike the others it wasn’t destructive at its core.

Maia’s voice tore Samos from his reverie, riddled with concern. “Well, this won’t all fit,” she said, hands on her wide hips. “We can all head back for now and then come back for the craft after we’ve set up in Sandover for the night?”

Samos frowned. The relatively small wooden speedboat—the engine surprisingly advanced for the time period—was absolutely incapable of transporting the four of them and the rift rider, that much was clear. He supposed they could lash the futuristic hovercraft to the back of the boat and hope that the a-grav unit didn’t sputter on the way and send them sinking into the deep…

He really didn’t want to leave the rift rider here. It would need to be stored somewhere, obviously, but it just seemed so unsafe to leave it sitting on the coast. Saltwater, the mist of eco in the air, even the heat of the sun overhead could damage the device in a very short period of time, rendering its future use impossible.

“Alternatively,” Maia supplied after a moment, clearly able to pick up on Samos’ reluctance, “I could load up the craft and take it into town, unload and then come back to pick you all up?”

“That…would be preferred,” Samos admitted.

She turned. “Gol?”

He nodded, heaving a sigh and leaning forward as he sunk to sit cross-legged in the sand, Jak still bundled up on his back fast asleep. He held the position, holding the boy up off the sand. “We’ll be fine.”

A little more pushing and a couple quick words of confirmation and Maia was off, leaving the two sages and the charge they presently shared alone on the beach. The younger of the two energetic academics shifted, carefully pulling Jak forward to perch the sleeping lump of a boy on his lap in order to cast his eyes upward, toward the sky. The way they flicked away from the smudge of green visible on the horizon spoke volumes toward his relationship with the village.

Perhaps it was just the stigma of his chosen eco that made the villagers treat him with disdain? Or maybe they didn’t, and he just happened to be every bit as sensitive as he was dramatic.

“You’ll like it here,” Gol said at last. Samos looked at him, but the younger man’s eyes were still cast high into the expanse of cloud-dappled blue above. “It’s a nice place, Sandover. Good people, if slow to forgive.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied. “Thankfully, it’s difficult to cause too much harm with green eco unless you’re really trying for it.” He had meant for the statement to be a reassurance, perhaps a confirmation of his own comfort in his position as a sage, but he saw the way Gol’s sharp jaw tensed when he spoke.

“Yes, thankfully.” Gol’s tone wasn’t precisely harsh, but it was clear that Samos had put his foot in his mouth. The last thing he wanted was to alienate himself from the sages here, but Gol seemed…well, if nothing else, the man was obviously difficult to please.

Samos plopped down on the sand beside him, the grit sharp against his skin, and sat in silence for a long moment. He looked at Jak, curled up and nestled close to Gol’s chest, the man’s mismatched hands carefully keeping him up off the surface of the ground. The contamination here had to be minimal at best, but without the respirator Samos supposed he could understand limiting contact as much as possible.

“You’re good with kids,” Samos said at last.

That, of everything, made Gol blink and look down, meeting his eyes at last. “Pardon?”

“Kids. At least this one, and that’s saying something. He’s…a good judge of character, but where we come from that means he’s not very trusting.”

Of course, little Jak had also trusted Kor, but that was hardly something that they could blame on the boy. The metalhead leader had fooled them all, pulling one over on both versions of Jak and the entire underground; they trusted him because he was old, one of the oldest people anyone in the underground had ever seen outside the noble districts. So few people survived to old age, and fewer still had the level of knowledge that Kor had. Everyone assumed he was a survivor of the holy district, that he’d been evacuated before Praxis brought the wall down and locked Samos and the rest out there to die.

Regardless, the likelihood that Gol posed anywhere near the danger that Kor had hidden right in front of them was slim to say the least.

The younger sage actually smiled slightly, just barely flashing his too-sharp teeth, and glanced down at the little boy. “Maia and I have one back home, up north. They’re probably about the same age, Dax just turned five.”

Samos froze. Dax? As in Daxter, the _ottsel_? That couldn’t be a coincidence, and yet…

Talking beasts were hardly what one could call common, but Samos had been under the impression that Daxter was just that, an animal that had somehow picked up the capacity to speak somewhere along Jak’s adventures. Was it possible that he started those adventures as a _person_?

“We should introduce them,” Samos said with a smile that wasn’t entirely sincere. The pieces were falling into place here, far more quickly than he had anticipated and pointing in a direction that he definitely hadn’t expected. The implication here was that Jak’s best friend, possibly the only thing that kept him stable through the fight for the city and the days after the Dark Warrior Program, was the son of the world’s first sage of dark eco; it would explain his unerring capacity to handle Jak’s transformations with no ill effects if the affinity ran in his family. That seemed like something that they would have mentioned, something the other Samos would have added to the little bit of guidance he had given his younger self before sending him back in time.

If Daxter was the son of Gol Acheron, that meant that he absolutely did not live in Sandover. But there was no doubt, from bits and snatches of conversation Samos had heard, that the two of them grew up together.

The older Samos had said that Jak’s ability to survive the tortures Praxis put him through were thanks to his being watched over by a sage. Looking at Gol, holding the boy close, already working to protect him from exposure to the very energy that would ruin him later in life, Samos realized that his time twin had never said which one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally the second half of the first chapter, but at the time I was trying to keep the wordcount down. Considering how the next chapter is going, though, I think I'm just...gonna give up on that. I hope these beginning bits aren't too much of a slog.
> 
> Doodles and other nonsense related to this fic can be found on [my tumblr.](http://kingofbeartraps.tumblr.com/tagged/voltafaccia-au)


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